Episode 1: 5 Powerful Facebook Ad Strategies for Local Businesses

🎯 Want to know which Facebook ads ACTUALLY work for local businesses in 2025? As a former second-grade teacher turned marketing strategist who's helped 100+ local business owners with their Facebook & Instagram ads, I'm breaking down my top 5 ad strategies that convert social media scrollers into paying customers.

In this video, you'll learn:

• The "Visibility Ad" strategy that makes you stand out in your local market
• How to use Messenger FAQ ads to generate quality leads
• A clever way to use Event ads (even if you don't host events!)
• The Direct Booking ad strategy that brought one client 8 new customers in 30 days
• My secret weapon: retargeting ads that keep you top of mind

Perfect for: Salon owners, spa services, retail shops, restaurants, fitness studios, professional services, and any local business owner tired of wasting money on ads that don't work!

🔗 Ready to master Facebook ads for your local business? Join my 12-week program: https://hello.nicoleeldridgemedia.com/course

📱 Connect with me: Instagram: www.instagram.com/nicoleeldridge_ads 

Email: nicole@nicoleeldridgemedia.com 

Website: www.nicoleeldridgemedia.com

Transcript

Nicole: 0:02

Here I am. Welcome to episode one of Hometown Advantage, the podcast for local business owners where we don't just focus on views and visibility. We prioritize turning social media scrollers into paying customers for your local business. I'm Nicole Eldridge. I'm a marketing strategist that's supported over a hundred business owners with Facebook and Instagram ads. And if you're an expert. at what you do, but marketing feels like a second job. You're in the right place. Each week, I'm going to break down social media marketing strategies into simple, actionable, second grade level steps. Former second grade teacher here. That actually work for local businesses. There's no fluff, no techie setups, just breaking down real strategies. You can implement today to get seen by your community and turn that visibility in revenue. So I'm so excited to be getting this out into the world. My clients and students know I'm known for going off. On marketing strategy rants, because there are so many misconceptions about social media marketing, especially for local businesses. There is not information out there about how things are different for you as a local business owner compared to influencers and online business owners. And there's so many misconceptions about ads and running good ads. So I'm also excited to have more of an opportunity to talk about how I run my business and what goes on behind the scenes of like my launches and my done for you services and all of that. We're not going to dive too much into that today, but I would love to have a little blurb at the beginning of each podcast where I talk about those things. So if that's something you're interested in, stay tuned. If not, you can always just hit the fast forward button a couple of times on that part. So today we're talking about my top five Facebook ad strategies for local businesses. And this is important and crucial for local businesses to get On board with because your Facebook and Instagram organic content isn't being seen. So the things you're posting to your page that's meant to be seen by followers simply isn't. About 5 percent of your followers are seeing your content. And the algorithm is just not working in your favor right now. Even if it does show your content to non followers, a lot of times those are people that live nowhere near you. A lot of times they're just other people in your niche doing what you do. Or honestly, it's just totally random, non relevant people. Facebook and Instagram has been struggling with this and their algorithm in general. And local business content is just not being pushed out. But when you run paid ads, you're taking control over who sees your content and what actions people can take straight from that content. Like you can have a message button straight on your ad, you can have a link that goes straight to your booking page. You can optimize for comments, you can optimize for engagement. There are so many different options and types of ads to run. But I'm going to explain my top five here, what they look like, why they work, And just to note, I've had several students inside my program tell me these are not strategies that they've seen taught before. I have people coming to me who have taken different ads programs and courses, and I just feel so strongly about this because So few people are teaching on it because in my world, the ads and marketing world, people are so quick to want to work with and jump on the wagon of working with online influencers because they think But That's where all the money is. So that's where they go. But the truth is that local business owners can actually benefit from ads even more so than online business owners if they know how to run the right ones. the other thing that happens is that agencies come in and they use extremely outdated strategies because they don't have what I have in my business, where it's just Eyes on all different types of businesses and the marketing that's working. And I'm so connected in the ads world. Like I know when there's new things coming out, what new things would work for local businesses, what might not. Like agencies, for example, tend to just run a lot of lead formats, which are Quickly becoming my least favorite type of ad, that could be another day. Top five ads that local businesses should be leveraging in their business to get thousands of eyes. Not just any eyes of people in their community. Ad number one is what we call the visibility. This is just a reel with a hook and a topic that stands out. We're not actually promoting a specific offer. We're just taking our megaphone and letting everyone know, I'm here, this is why you should care about me, right? The trick here, that so many people miss, is the content of the ad. Anyone can go in and push buttons, but when your video is boring AF. You are throwing money straight into the trash because no one's watching. The saying now is attention is currency. So it is so valuable if you know how to get people's attention. Simply yelling your message, does nothing if the message is not landing, right? So we use this visibility ad as our first step in a five step ad strategy. Actually, it's an overall marketing strategy, for local businesses because this, accomplishes the very first goal with marketing, which is get seen. But of course you can't stop there, right? There has to be follow up, more steps that happen after getting seen. So that leads me to my second type of ad, and that's the messenger FAQ ad. We're going to do two things here. We're going to keep building brand awareness with this ad, and we're also going to promote an offer. So with the visibility ad, we're really not promoting an offer. We are really just trying to show how we stand out, how we're unique, and let our community know we are here. That's important. So now we're moving into the next steps, which is like promoting our offers and making sales. I have ran these messenger FAQ ads for all sorts of businesses, a mobile spray tanner, retail stores and shops, aestheticians, cleaning companies, more. And they work like a charm. They are more of a long term strategy as well because What you're optimizing for isn't a direct sale, you're optimizing for engagement when you set up this ad, but this type of engagement that you're getting is extremely valuable. Valuable, going back to the attention is currency line that everyone's using in marketing right now. You're not just getting someone to watch a video, you're getting them to send you a message to ask you questions. The way this ad is set up. is someone will see your photo or your video and they will be prompted to send a message to learn more. When they click send message, you will have pre populated questions that come up and automated answers that respond depending on the question that people click on. So this is helping them get more information that they need without overloading all the information into the ad copy. And it opens up the opportunity to have real conversations with people too, who are interested in your business. Some people say they don't want to do that or have those, and they forget that conversations lead to sales. And as a business owner, like you have to keep talking to your people. And this is the easiest way to do it. You don't have to go to a networking event and, individually introduce yourself to everybody or stand up in front of everyone. you don't have to go door knocking, you don't have to make cold calls, you can just talk to people on the internet, which makes things so much easier. Okay, going to the next ad, the third one. This is the local event ad. This involves creating a Facebook event on Facebook and then running that as an ad. And this works for more than just like one off special events. So if you're a business that doesn't host a lot of events, stay tuned and keep listening because I want to tell you about an ad that gets me every time and it is for Urban Air. So it's a trampoline park and they have Toddler time. I think it's called every Friday. And so they have set up an event on Facebook and they have it recurring like every Friday from this time to this time and they run that as an ad and it pops up on my feed. I get it and it reminds me I should take my kids there on Friday because I have my kids home on Fridays. So I get served that ad over and over again. And honestly, it does remind me that is an option to do with my kids and that I should do that. I have a client that did a lot of trade shows, and we would run event ads for that and put a blurb in their ad copy about. An incentive for coming and saying hi. So anything that you can bundle as an event. I think these ads work really well because not a lot of people are doing them. the way Facebook works is when you choose your objective and you choose what kind of ad you want to run. It is delivered to different. people based on the objective that you choose. A lot of people aren't running these event ads, so the space that is available for them, the competition is low, people can respond right on the event, and then anytime you post updates in there or anything changes, those people who've responded will get notifications. So this is good. Anything that you can like, bundle it. and package it up as an event. Try it. Let's get creative here. Okay? Going on to ad number four is the straight to booking page ad. This ad, warning, takes some tweaking and tracking things to make it work. But if you can get it right, it works really well. This ad has worked really well for a client of mine who is a nurse esthetician. She does Botox. We had tested a couple different things in a couple different offers. A lot of them were messenger ads or traffic ads to her website for different reasons, but we came up with an introductory Botox offer for her, and we ran ads straight to the booking page. No messages, nothing. And in 1 month, she booked 8 new clients from her ads, possibly more, and she spent just under 500. The offer was for a 200, introductory service, but most of the people who came in ended up spending much more than that, so she was extremely profitable in those ads. Not to mention the fact that she has created a new client base of people who will return to her for years and years to come because she's amazing. These ads involve usually a graphic with details on the offer, You need a juicy offer for people to take action and for these to work. The reason that we don't jump straight into the straight to booking page ad is because we can spend a lot of money without seeing any results and not really know why. people see the ad. They click, and then a lot of times they're just not in a place to straight up book an appointment. Like maybe they're like me and they have to figure out childcare, or they gotta get their finances in order. Or there's just no times that they think could work for them on the calendar. There's so many reasons that people might not just book straight from an ad. What ends up happening is, if you don't know what you're looking for, when you send people straight to your website or straight to a booking page, is people fall off somewhere along the way, and you don't really know where, so you don't know why your ads aren't working, and if you're not testing new graphics, new copy, new offers, they're just not going to work, and you're just going to be stuck thinking like, this just doesn't work for me. So the straight to booking page ad can be incredible because it's very much a, once it works, you put it up. And you've got new people on your calendar. But it's not something I ever recommend starting with. Okay, last one. Ad number five. Re targeting ads. Your visibility and Messenger ads and all of these ads we've talked about so far will blow up your visibility. Your lead generation ads will generate leads, but this, the retargeting, is where so many business owners miss the mark and come to me saying their ads didn't work. Here's the deal. Ads are not an overnight thing. You have to get visible, but then you have to stay in front of your target audience. And that's where retargeting ads come in. So you can use your organic content. Remember, it needs to be standout content that people enjoy consuming. Not, a graphic with so much text on it that people aren't going to read or even a reel with no text on it. Like we need to be putting text on our reels. Like I said, it needs to be content that people enjoy consuming and you can put a dollar a day behind it. And pretty much they screw the algorithm because you're actually going to get in front of your followers and website visitors and, engagers. So what happens is you go into the ad manager and you set up something called custom audiences. And then you are able to target only the people who follow you, only the people who have visited your website, even only the people who. are on your email list if you have one or your customer list. And so you're able to pay a lot less and just get in front of people who already know you so that you can stay top of mind because getting in front of people with your ads one or two times is not enough to see a lasting change. So that about covers it for my five top ads. Like I said before, there are so many different options and different types of ads you can run. If you're posting on social media to get in front of people, if you have a local business that could use more clients or more foot traffic, there is an ad strategy that will work for you. If you found this helpful, I'd love if you shot me a DM on Instagram, let me know what resonates, what questions does this leave you with, or even better yet, if you shared a screenshot on your Instagram stories of this podcast, I'd eat that up. if you're ready to blow up your local visibility and convert that visibility into paying clients and customers, I want to invite you to join me inside my 12 week local ads program, where I take you step by step through each lad you should set up. Based on your specific business, we talk about what type of content you should run for your ads. Step by step, click exactly these buttons to get them set up, and then we watch the results come in together and talk about how to optimize them so that you can be the most profitable from your social media marketing. You get support and feedback every step of the way from me. DM me on Instagram, you can DM me the word program, or you can just let me know you're interested in learning more, or send me an email, my email is nicole at nicoleeldridgemedia. com. I'll put it in the show notes. I'll put links in the show notes to the sales page of the program so you can scope them out on your own too. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you again soon.